It could so easily have become a crock…..

“Nuts” I said to myself “my chances of photographing that rainbow are fat and none”. As I ran upstairs to grab the camera I caught sight of the carrier bag full of walnuts which two of our grandchildren had collected for us from their garden. Very like cats and children, rainbows don’t stay in the same position for long…or maybe they do. That sounded authoritative and I’m not an authority on rainbows; I just had the feeling that the rainbow would disappear before I had a chance to take a picture and because I was not concentrating on the rainbow that firstly, I had already seen, and secondly because I was now thinking of adding walnuts to the pears that were already turning golden in bubbling hot sugar and butter on the stove and which were likely to burn if I hung around too long taking pictures at the back door. All hopes of finding the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, which appeared to be just behind the garden wall, have long disappeared  from my dreams so the clear and present apprehension that the very heart of my intended pear tatin might be currently turning into a crock of shit, burnt shit at that, created a force that dragged me from Mother Nature’s prism to the spitting pan on the hob as time waits for no man, particularly if no man is dealing with sugar and fire. Nuts were quickly cracked and stuffed down into the hot, buttery sugar between the pears. It all ended well: the rain passed and the tatin was eaten in front of a blazing fire which set of events may well be the fabled crock at the rainbow’s end.